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A nice sausage that nevertheless doesn't taste strongly enough of the advertised flavours.

I always like to try different vegetarian foods, especially at a bargain price! So I was delighted to see these Quorn Red Leicester and Onion sausages available for £1.00 a packet in Morrisons. I found these in the chiller cabinet with the other vegetarian foods that are sometimes called "meat substitute products" eg veggie "chicken" slices. I have since seen them on sale for around £1.89 - £2.09 so it is worth shopping around and keeping an eye out for special offers. In my experience, Quorn products are usually available at a discount somewhere at any given time, although I don't believe this variety of sausage is as widely stocked as the original kind.

The packaging features the usual bright Quorn logo and an inviting looking picture of the cooked sausages. The pack size is 250g which contains 5 sausages packed neatly into a black plastic tray. I think it's a shame it's so difficult to find somewhere to recycle this type of packaging, but it is compact enough to slip easily into a well- stocked fridge!

Being a vegetarian product, these Quorn sausages obviously don't contain meat. They are chiefly made from the usual Quorn mycroprotein. I was happy to read on the packet that the sausages are made with free-range rather than battery eggs. The use of any egg at all does rule them out for vegans though.

My first impression on opening the pack was that they are quite chunky, good sized sausages, rather pale in colour but not unlike the meat kind. I decided to cook them in the oven [16 mins] because I thought that this would be a relatively healthy method as it just involves brushing them with little oil. You can if you prefer shallow fry them [in 10 mins], or cook under the grill [8 mins] or on the barbeque [10 mins]. An appetising, savoury aroma began to waft through the kitchen about half way through the cooking time, which is when they need to be turned. Once finished cooking, they had developed a tasty looking fairly dark brown colour. I think that in this respect they are superior to some other vegetarian bangers which can look unappealingly anaemic even when well cooked.

I thought they had a flavoursome, meaty taste, very close to a real good quality sausage. They were also nicely seasoned. However, I could only detect the slightest hint of onion and none at all of the Red Leicester cheese which is disappointing. On cutting one open, I could see orange flecks of cheese inside but that's no good if you can't taste them. I thought the texture was smooth and succulent and not at all dry or rubbery. I thought the sausages may have a tendency to be gooey or stringy because of the cheese content but there doesn't seem enough of it to make a difference. I had mine in a burger bun with a tomato sauce - 2 did the trick in filling me up with the help of a side salad. I have since tried them with a side serving of mash potatoes and peas and I think that they work well with this sort of accompaniment. I also like adding any left over ones to a pasta dish as they help make it more substantial. I think they are a versatile food to have in your fridge, but I think they would have been even more so if they really did taste of cheese and onion! As it is, I don't feel that they taste hugely different from the standard Quorn sausage. I have kept buying these whenever they have been on offer chiefly because of the reduced price.

The sausages can be frozen [uncooked]. I will certainly try that next time I buy them as it means they can be kept for up to 3 months rather than a few weeks. This does mean they would take a few extra minutes to cook though.

Overall, I am happy to eat these, despite a lack of the advertised flavours as they are still a nice tasting food. I'd also serve them to meat eaters! I would recommend them to anyone who is looking for a good value snack food that is quick and easy to cook but if you really want a cheesey sausage, I think the taste is too weak to satisfy you! I certainly wouldn't pay a premium price for these if you can find the other Quorn sausages around for less.

[This review is adapted from one I have previously published under my user name on Ciao.]

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I would definitely eat these sausages again, but probably not very often at the £2.08 RRP

If you're trying to eat more healthily, sausages will probably be one of the first things you stop putting in your supermarket trolley. Typically high in saturated fats, the repercussions of eating them regularly are said to result in heart, blood pressure or bowel problems for some people. I have always tried not to think too much about some of the less appetising extracts from cow or pig that can apparently lurk inside the skin of a cheaper sausage. For someone who looks upon eating as a hobby, I have always found it perverse that the tastiest foods are usually the worst for you and decided early in life that blissful ignorance was the best policy. The trouble is, I'm now beginning to pay for it.

Recent trips around the supermarket have therefore required a lot more thought, as I try to strike a balance between healthy and tasty. Not an easy task when trying to make sense of food labels measuring nutrition by serving and per 100g. So when I discovered sausages and burgers in the Quorn range on special offer for a pound each, it was one of the easier choices to make.

Quorn is the brand name for a range of meat substitutes made from mycoprotein, a synthetic food source derived from fungus, which was developed in the 1960's in anticipation of food shortages that never materialised. After years of testing, it hit the food market in the 1980's and there are now over 100 products made from the substance, all subtly flavoured to imitate.

The product I picked up with was Quorn's 'Red Leicester and Onion Sausages', in its distinctive carton with yellow and orange logo, that is 250g in weight containing five, yes FIVE sausages. I found this quantity a little odd in more ways than one. Cooking for two meant I had to slice one in half, so that we could have equal portions of two and a half sausages each.

Each sausage contains only 3.3g of fat, a third the amount found in a typical Walls pork sausage, owing to the fact that its main ingredient is 44% of low fat mycoprotein rather than meat. Little wonder then that these sort of products are said to have many health benefits, including actually lowering cholesterol levels.

Cooking is a simple process of brushing with vegetable oil and putting them under the grill for 8 to 10 minutes, turning occasionally. This is one of the advantages of mycoprotein, its relatively short cooking time. First impressions are that they look like a conventional sausage, if a little smaller than average.

So far so good, but how does it fair on a plate with a dollop of mash? Quite well actually. It certainly tastes like a sausage should, although I can't, in all honesty, detect the 7.9% vegetarian cheese content. The texture of the sausage is also more or less as you'd expect, except that there is obviously not a hint of gristle in this meat free product. What did become apparent after a few mouthfuls however, was their lack of succulence, being drier than a normal sausage, probably due to the fact they aren't oozing fat.

The biggest compliment I can pay to these sausages, is that if they had been prepared for me and presented on a plate, I wouldn't have had an inkling that they didn't contain any meat.